The Faerie Queene
Page 117
20 7 Aetna: the Sicilian volcano.
21 6 Morddure: ‘hard-biting’ (French: mordre, ‘bite’; dur, ‘hard1). Orlando’s sword in both Boiardo and Ariosto is named ‘Durindana’.
22 4 brond: sword.
23 2 salued: greeted.
23 4 stomachous: bitter, irascible.
23 7 demaine: bearing.
28 2 dayes-man: mediator. See Job 9.33.
28 3 prest: at hand.
28 8 abie: pay (a penalty).
29 3 Nephews sonne: i.e., great-grandson. See Exodus 20.5 and the appro- priateness of the curse to Cymochles and Pyrochles because of their lineage, as given in II.4.41.
29 6 streightly: directly.
29 7 vpreare: some editors emend to vpheave for the sake of rhyme.
30 4 Termagaunt: name believed by medieval Christians to be that of a Moslem deity.
30 5 sad: heavy.
31 6 miscreant: villain.
33 3 Mahoune: Mahomet, prophet of Islam, revered by the Saracens.
35 2 importable: unbearable.
36 3 poinant: piercing. puissant: French: puissant, ‘powerful’.
36 5 gryde: pierce.
36 7 let… abyde: i.e., remain in the wound.
36 9 plesh: puddle.
37 3 rayle: gush.
37 5 felnesse: fierceness.
37 8 brunt: blow.
38 5 troncheon: cudgel.
38 7 hacqueton: stuffed jacket worn under armour.
39 7 at ward: on the defensive.
39 9 reuoke: i.e., move back.
40 7–9cf. Hosea 13.8.
40 9 yond: furious.
42 1 bayt: annoy. ‘Baiting’ refers to a popular spectator sport in which a large and powerful animal (usually a bear, but also a bull or even a lion) was chained and set upon by dogs who harassed and fought with it until enough blood was shed to satisfy the patrons. See OF 18.19.
43 3 pourtract was writ: picture was painted.
44 2 appeached: accused, cast doubt on their honour.
44 6 hauberk: coat of mail.
45 3 burganet: helmet
46 1 german: brother.
47 5 foynd: lunged.
48 5 layd: allayed, calmed.
49 9 sleight: cunning.
50 2 Bittur: bittern, a small heron-like bird.
51 5 dismall day: Latin: dies mail, ‘evil days’; i.e., day of doom.
51 9 souenaunce: memory.
52 2 Imitated from Turnus’ last speech in Aen. 12.932.
54 4 no whit: not at all.
55 2 embayd: bathed.
56 7 fond: found.
56 8 aggrace: favour, goodwill.
CANTO 9
2 5 court: courtesy. bord: address. 2 7 scord: drawn.
2 9 semblaunt: resemblance.
3 3 trew liuely-head: i.e., the real person.
4 2 retrait: portrait. 4 5 liege: lord.
4 7 enlumines: lights up.
5 1 Arthur’s vision of the Faerie Queene is told in I.9.13-15. 5 7 amenaunce: conduct.
5 8 hire: recompense.
6 5 sold: pay, remuneration. enter taine: accept. 6 7 remaine: reward.
6 9 Afthegall is the hero of Book V. Sophy (Greek: ‘wisdom1) was pro- bably intended to be the hero of one of the unwritten books of The Faerie Queene.
7 2 plight: pledge.
8 1 cheuisaunce: enterprise.
9 4 stead: serve, help. 10 4 Foreby: near.
10 5 hospitale: place of lodging. 10 7 Coursers: horses, auale: dismount. 13 2 thousand villeins: the forces of Maleger. See II.11.5 ff.
16 2 fennes of Allan: bogs in central Ireland. 16 7 noyous: harmful.
18 1 Alma: Latin: almus, ‘nourishing’, i.e., the soul. Her castle is an allegory of the body, the mortal part of man. This episode has often been severely criticized, but Spenser is using the techniques of’ metaphysical’ poetry in treating the human body as a construct (cf. Donne’s comparison of love to ‘stiff, twin compasses’ in ‘A Valediction Forbidding Mourning’). The artificiality of the comparison is intended. The theory of bodily functions is based on Galen, a famous Greek physician. An early seventeenth-century elaboration of this episode is Phineas Fletcher, The Purple Island. See also the castle of Kind, Piers Plowman, B text, passus 9.
19 8 tyre: head-dress.
19 9 Rosiere: rose bush.
20 6 season dew: i.e., appropriate period of time.
21 1 Castle wall: built of substance like Egyptian slime because God created man from the dust of the earth (Genesis 2.7). 21 3 fensible: strong, well-defended.
21 6 Nine: Ninus, husband of Semiramis and founder of Nineveh; often confused, as here, with Nimrod, who constructed the tower of Babel. The tower was never completed, owing to the confusion of languages, sent by God as a punishment (Genesis 11).
22 This is the most obviously complicated of Spenser’s stanzas. It is an amalgam of arithmological symbolism derived from Pythagoras and Platonism. It is the first part of The Faerie Queene to have been commented on critically: Sir Kenelm Digby, Observations on the 22. Stanza in the gth Canto of the 2d Book of Spencers Faery Queen, London, 1644, who interprets the ‘part circular’ as the mind, the ‘part triangular’ as the body, and the ‘quadrate’ as the four humours by which mind and body are connected (Var., pp. 472-8). Dowden (Var., p. 480), citing Bartholomew Anglicus, reads the three parts as the rational soul, the vegetative soul, and the sensitive soul respectively; while Morley (Var., p. 481) reads them as a stick drawing of head, legs, and trunk. Numbers in the Middle Ages and Renaissance were considered to have symbolic properties; hence the circle, which is associated with unity and has neither beginning nor end, is ‘immortall, perfect, masculine’ and the triangle, which is associated with diversity, is ‘imperfect, mortall, foeminine’. The proportions of seven and nine of the ‘base’ quadrate (rectangle) are used because seven was the number of the body and nine the number of the mind. Such a proportional arrangement of parts produced a musical harmony (diapase). The fullest treatment of the complexities of this stanza is in Alastair Fowler, Spenser and the Numbers oj Time, pp. 260-88. See also N & Q 212, 1967, 456-8.
23 1 two gates: mouth and anus.
24 1 porch: lower part of face.
24 4 wandring vine: the beard. 24 5 wanton yuie: moustache.
24 6 Portcullis: a grate which could be lowered to cover the entrance, i.e., the nose.
24 8 compacture: compact structure.
25 1 Barbican: room guarding entrance to castle, i.e., oral cavity. Porter: i.e., tongue. 25 8 out of time: discordantly.
25 9 prime: the first hour of the day, sunrise.
26 2 Twise sixteen warders: the thirty-two teeth. 26 5 enraunged: ordered in rows.
26 7 obeysaunce: respectful salutation, e.g., a bow.
26 9 gestes: gestures.
27 3 drapets: covering.
27 4 Against: in preparation for. 29 1 vaut: room with vaulted ceiling, i.e., the stomach, dispence: i.e., production.
29 7 Mongiball: another name for Mount Aetna (Italian: Mongibello).
30 4 pake of bell owes: i.e., the lungs. styre: move.
30 s inspyre: blow. 30 6 accoyld: gathered.
30 8 viandes: food.
31 1 Concoction: the first stage of digestion, in the stomach; the second stage (Spenser’s Digestion) turns the chyme into blood.
31 4 th’Achates: the purchased provisions, cates.
32 5 noyous: harmful.
32 8 Port Esquiline: i.e., the anus. The Esquiline Gate in Rome was a common sewer and dump.
32 9 auoided: expelled.
32 9 priuily: secretly, but with a pun on ‘privy’.
33 7 arras: tapestry.
34 5 aggrate: please. 37 1 pall. robe.
37 3 Poplar: the poplar was sacred to Hercules.
37 7 apaid: pleased.
37 8 doen: do.
39 3 samblaunt: mien.
39 8 Prays-desire: desire of praise; glory. Arthur is matched with the personi- fication of the quality he exemplifi
es.
40 3 demaine: demeanour.
40 7 The bird has not been identified definitely. It may be the jynx from
Theocritus, Idylls 2.17 or the cuckoo from Chaucer, ‘Knight’s Tale’ 1930.
41 1 commoned: chatted.
41 7 Castory: reddish-brown dye extracted from a beaver.
42 8 discure: discover, reveal.
43 9 Shamefastnesse: the lady whom Guyon entertains is contrasted to
Arthur’s Prays-desire, specifying the difference between Guyon and Arthur.
44 8 Turret: i.e., the brain.
44 9 ten steps: the neck?
45 4 suruew’d: overlooked, surveyed.
45 6 Cadmus: the founder of Thebes, which Alexander the Great destroyed in 335 bc.
45 9 young Hectors bloud: Astyanax, the son of Hector, was thrown from the battlements of Troy by the Greeks when they took the city.
46 2 herbars: arbours.
46 3 Beacons: i.e., the eyes.
47–58The three men are three of the five senses of the mind, distinct from the five external senses: imagination, judgement, and memory. Imagination (Phantasies) is not our modern word imagination; rather, it means the power of the mind to put together image pictures from sense data. For example, the idea of a centaur – half-man and half-horse – is the work of the imagination. It is not restricted to things that exist and hence is associated with the future. Judgement deals with the present and judges the sense data, making us aware of our sense perceptions. C. S. Lewis defines judgement:’ (a) “It judges of the operation of a sense so that when we see, we know we are seeing”; (b) it puts together the data given by the five senses, or Outward Wits, so that we can say an orange is sweet or one orange is sweeter than another’ (The Discarded Image, p. 164). Memory (Eumnestes: Greek: ‘good memory’) deals with the past. The great age of Eumnestes requires a young helper, Anamnestes (Greek: ‘the reminder’).
48 1 he: i.e., Socrates, who explains in the Apology why the oracle of Apollo at Delphi thought him the wisest man alive.
48 4 Pylian syre: Nestor, the wise counsellor in Il. and Od.
48 6 Priams: Priam, king of Troy.
49 7 preiudize: power to predict.
50 5 wit: intelligence.
50 8 Centaurs: mythological beasts, half-man and half-horse.
Hippodames: sea-horses.
51 9 leasings: falsehoods.
52 4 swarth: dark. crabbed: irritable.
52 9 When . . . agonyes: Saturn presided over the births of moody or contemplative persons. For astrology see Fowler, Numbers, pp. 289-91
53 3 gestes: deeds.
53 7 decretals: decrees.
53 9 wittily: ingeniously, intelligently.
55 8 scorse: exchange.
56 4 eld: passage of time. 56 5 weld: govern.
56 6 scrine: box of valuables.
56 8 Nine: Ninus, the founder of Nineveh. See II.9.21.6 and note.
56 9 Assaracus: mythical king of Troy, son of Tros.
Inachus: king of Argos and the river-god father of Io.
57 1 Nestor: see note to 48.4. Nestor was said to have lived for three genera- tions.
57 2 Mathusalem: reputed to have lived 969 years.
58 3 fet: fetch.
59 6 tnoniments: monuments, in the sense of’records’. 59 8 Regiments: kingdoms.
Canto 10
This canto is devoted to the matter contained in the two books read by Arthur and Guyon in Alma’s castle. Spenser is following the tradition of Virgil and Ariosto of giving praise to their patrons by relating their ancestry as an epic catalogue. Arthur reads the chronicle history of Britain (stanzas 5-68); Guyon, the history of Faeryland (stanzas 70-76). Spenser derived much of his history of Britain from the twelfth-century Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britatmiae, supplemented by Elizabethan chroniclers such as Hardyng, Grafton, Stow and Holinshed. The most complete treatment of this material is Carrie Anna Harper, The Sources of the British Chronicle History in Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Bryn Mawr, 1910, and its summary in Var., pp. 449-53, 301-34. Spenser’s history follows the general outline of the chroniclers’ division of British history. Spenser begins with Albion (6) and the native Giants, who marry the daughters of Diocletian (7-8) and reign until the arrival of Aeneas’ descendant, Brutus, who establishes a new Troy in Britain (9-36). His line is succeeded by Mulmutius Dunwallo, who reunites the kingdom (37-46), until the invasion of Julius Caesar establishes Roman control (47-63). The uprising of the Saxon heptarchy under Hengist and his descendants leads to a long period of conflict between the Saxons and the Romans, culminating in the reign of Uther Pendragon, Arthur’s father (64-8). The history is continued in III.3.22–50in the prophecy of Merlin about the progeny of Britomart and Arthegall, leading to the establishment of the Tudors and the reign of Elizabeth I. For readings of this history see Harry Berger, jr. Allegorical Temper, pp. 89-114, and Roche, Kindly Flame, pp. 43-4. The history of Faeryland is Spenser’s invention, which is discussed in Roche, pp. 34-42.
1 8 Soueraigne: Queen Elizabeth I.
3 1 of Mœonian quill: i.e., of Homer. Maeonia was thought to have been his home.
3 2 rote: a musical instrument like a violin. OED cites this line.
3 3–4Ossa hill: a mountain in Thessaly where the giants attempted to capture Mt Olympus. They were defeated by Jove at Phlegra.
3 7 learned daughters: the Muses.
3 9 blazon: proclaim, praise.
5 5 Island then: the traditional idea that Britain was once connected to the
Continent (We now know that Britain was joined to the Continent until the retreat of the ice sheets caused the sea level to rise at the end of the last ice age.) paysd: balanced.
5 9 Celticke mayn-land: France.
6 7 Albion: Latin: albus, ‘white’, so named because of the white chalk cliffs of England,
7 5 fen: marsh.
8 3 some assot: make some seem foolish.
8 3 ff monstrous error: Hardyng tells the story of the thirty daughters of Diocletian, who murdered their husbands by their father’s orders on their marriage night. He then denies that these are the hapless ladies who come to Britain and mate with the giants. Instead, he says, the giants’ ladies were the fifty daughters of Danaus, the Danaids. Some say that the large number of daughters, whosoever they might be, were so desirous of husbands that they coupled with devils and brought forth giants.
8 6 comparting: associating with.
9 6 Brutus: the legendary first king of Britain and descendant of Aeneas. 9 7 Assaracs: legendary founder of Troy, son of Tros.
9 8 fatall error: i.e., ‘rated wandering’, imitated from Aen. 1.2.
10 3 fone: foes.
10 7 Hogh: Hoe cliff at Plymouth.
10 8 Goëmot: Gogmagot (Goëmot), a giant, was defeated by Corineus, one of Brute’s generals, and thrown from the cliff at Hoe.
11 2 Debon: legendary founder of Devonshire. See also IU.9.50. 11 3 eight lugs: about 1300 feet.
11 3–9Coulin …. Canutus: the stories told in this stanza are unknown from any other authority. Holinshed tells that Hercules killed Albion.
12 1 meed: reward. 12 4 gest: deed.
12 8 hyre: reward.
12 9 inquire: call.
13–14Brute’s three sons: Locrine (for whom England is called Logres), Albanact (for whom Scotland is called Albania), and Camber (to whom the land beyond the river Severn was given, modem Wales).
13 3 eschewd: avoided.
14 5 depart: separate.
15 2 affray: frighten. 15 S Noyes: Noah’s.
15 9 head… make: gain advantage over them. munifience: fortification. 17 4 appease: calm.
17 6 The adultery of Locrine with Estrild and Locrine’s defeat by his wife,
Gwendolen, the daughter of Corineus, is told in the chronicles. Sabrina, the child of Locrine’s adultery, appears in Milton’s Coma, 824 ff
18 9 ouerhent: overtook, seized.
20 2 vnmeet… sway: i.e., too young to assume leadership
, ao 4 stay: support
21 3–4Memprise… ManiU: Mempricius and Manlius, sons of Madan. 21 4 consorted: allied.
21 6 Ebranck: son of Mempricius.
21 8 Henault: a region in the Low Countries.
22 7 germans: brothers.
23 2 second Brute: Brutus Greenshield, son of Ebranck; see 24.7.
23 3 semblance: resemblance.
24 1 Scaldis: the river Schelde.
Hania: Hainaut.
24 2 Estham bruges: marshes in Hainaut.
24 4 No sources have been found for Elversham and DelL
24 5 Henalois: men of Hainaut.
24 6 Brunchildis: Prince of Hainaut.
24 7 vermeil: red.
24 8 Scuith guiridh: Welsh: ‘green shield’.
24 9 y Scuith gogh: Welsh: ‘red shield’.
25 3 Cairleill… Cairleon: Carlisle (city of Leill) and Chester. 25 7 preace: crowd.
25 9 mollifide: softened.
26 2 Cairbadon: Bath.
26 4 quicke Brimston: sulphur waters at Bath.
27–34Spenser’s story of Lear is derived primarily from Geofirey, II.11-
27 4 seed: progeny.
28 s behoou’d: was appropriate.
28 6 wanting colours faire: lacking rhetorical ornamentation.
29 2 Cambria: Wales.
29 5 Celtica: Gaul, France.
30 3 regiment: kingship. 30 6 repayrd: went.
30 9 abated: slackened.
31 8 leau’d: raised, levied.
31 9 bereau’d: deprived.
32 2 eld: old age. 32 3 wild: willed.
32 4 weld: govern.
33 2–3Cundah… Morgan: nephews of Cordelia, Lear’s daughter.
34 1 his dead roome did supply: i.e., filled his position on his death.
34 6 Gorbogud: Gorboduc, subject of first English tragedy, by Thomas Sackville.
34 8 Arraught: took.
37 1 man of matchlesse might: Mulmutius Dunwallo.
37 2 wit: ability, intelligence.
37 6 loose: not unified.
38 2 Logris: England.
38 4 Albanie: Scotland, nominate: named.
38 s Cambry: Wales.
39 6 Numa: Numa Pompilius was the second king of Rome and a parallel to the British law-giver Mulmutius Dunwallo.
39 8 pollicie: prudence, political wisdom, statecraft.
40 4 periured oth: i.e., they broke a treaty.
40 7 loth: unwilling.
41 3 Easterland: modern Norway. See stanza 63.